January 16, 2019

25 Days and Counting

by wj

Article II, Section 3 of the US Constitution requires the President to annually "give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union”. President Washington did so with an address to Congress. But President Jefferson changed the practice to a written report. And so it remained until President Wilson re-established the practice of an address in 1913.

The way this works is, a formal invitation is made by the Speaker of the House to the President several weeks before each State of the Union Address. But not this year! Speaker Pelosi has written to the President to say that there are security concerns, what with the government being shut down. (After all, the Secret Service are one of the groups currently working without pay.) So either they can reschedule “after the government is reopened” or he can submit a written report. Zing! An un-invitation!

Conventional wisdom has seemed to be that Trump would continue the shutdown until the economic pain became too great. That is, great enough to penetrate the information bubble in which he lives. But it appears that Pelosi has found another handle: take away from Trump his opportunity of be the star of an hour long speech to the entire nation (covered on live TV) where he can boast of his accomplishments and generally prance about. And that, far more than mere economic pain, is hitting him where he lives.

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On the prospects of a wall-free funding bill, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) put it this way: “The president won’t sign it. Why would we work on it?”

“I’m ready to vote for anything that the president agrees to sign,” added Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), the third-ranking Senate Republican. “And once we get that, I’m a ‘yes’ vote.”

They'd rather admit that they've given up their power as a co-equal branch of government that can override vetoes, than that crippling or even destroying the federal government is a bug not a feature, with gravy if they can frame it as the fault of the Ds.

Although I expected it to happen at the end of last week, I still think that enough Republican Senators will fold as the wheels start coming off things back in their states. When the Republican governors and state legislative leaders there get loud enough, the Senators will remember that they are unlikely to win reelection if those state-level members of their party oppose them.

And now the so-called president has subordinated himself to Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity.

Between Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, it should be clear which one is abjectly subservient to Dear Leader. But be careful, Nancy: if you don't give He, Trump his lollipop, the Unholy Trinity will NOT applaud you for acting like a "co-equal" anything.

My aged mother still lives in her own house. It is an old house. It still has a fusebox, for instance. It is possibly the only house in the Greater Boston area without internet. Naturally, it has the constant stream of minor problems you would expect of such a house.

My aged mother (rightly) counts on me to fix these little problems, but she has a rule: "Fix it, but don't change anything." This is somewhat understandable: having lived in that house over 50 years she has established fixed routines for herself; as her memory gets dodgier, she clings even more steadfastly to those routines. New or different things (electronic ones especially) make her uncomfortable.

So, "Fix it, but don't change anything."

Reminds me of the "white working class" in the "heartland" as portrayed by many pundits and politicians.

The Government faces the same difficulty with respect to people who cling to their "way of life" that dutiful sons face with respect to aged mothers. Democrats believe in the power of The Government to fix things. But can The Government really help people who want The Government to stay the hell out of their lives? Can people who demand that their "way of life" be preserved also demand "change" or "progress" or "improvement"?

Well, yes: people can demand anything they like. But pundits and politicians who pretend to know how to make such people happy are welcome to advise me on how to "Fix it, but don't change anything" for my aged mother.

Coincidentally, the anguished cry of many non-IT people (certainly me) any time somebody tech-savvy goes anywhere near their computers...

The other day my wife was remarking on the piece of my Mac display that looks like it's stuck in a time warp. One corner is given over to a stack of command-prompt windows. Anyone from ~1980 Bell Labs or the Berkeley CS department would sit down in front of those, type a bit, and like the little girl in Jurassic Park, exclaim, "I know this. This is Unix!" One of the windows is running a program I wrote 30+ years ago called scraps that give me the equivalent of all the scraps of paper you scribble the odd notes on (and then promptly lose). Another one is logged into the Raspberry Pi that runs my "bedside appliance" and is where I do the code development for that device.

"How long must workers go unpaid before they're entitled not to turn up for work without risk of being fired for it?"

Workers have been showing up for jobs for which they are woefully underpaid for decades, not to mention the highly organized and purposeful conservative corporate movement's well-entrenched program of reducing compensation for labor ... cutting wages, cutting benefits, cutting retirement programs ... AND on top of that reducing or attempting to eliminate the safety net protecting workers from the ravages of the aforementioned cuts, AND sharply restricting union activity and membership any chance they get.

Not paying for labor, except for the select company of high-toned white collar labor remunerated via capital gains, is conservative republican boiler plate.

What do we think Delay, Armey, and Abramoff, fully supported by the entire evil republican edifice, were doing in the slave protecterate of the Marianas back in the day, fostering a model for NOT paying anyone for their labor which could then be adopted by America at large.

I find it amusing ... since I can't recommend my usual measures for well-deserved savage vengeance any longer, see the archives for those, amusement is my only recourse now ... that folks, government employees continually, always, daily for decades, maligned by stinking conservatives, for laziness, overcompensation, which is to say any at all, and outright theft, are showing up to labor for nothing on behalf of the very anti-American conservative filth whose faces those government employees should be spitting in, and much worse.

But, maybe we have a new model for American labor which can be adopted by the fucking private sector as well ... everyone.

No pay, but you had better show up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and kiss my ass and hand over those services and products gratis to me.

Shop-lifting, the new American economic paradigm.

And as any filthy republican will tell you, you are lucky to have a job. You'll be happy to be unemployed, even for nothing.

So-called Americans don't like that arrangement?

Good, fuck off and starve.

Kiss Dagny Taggert's stilletto heels.

We live in a culture now in which thieves can legally co-opt my personal data and sell it for a profit.

The possible solution is that maybe, maybe, I might be able to buy the personal data from those who stole it in the first place.

Really, sounds like a typical shithead full of shit American con-job to me.

Don't tax me that first cent, don't so much as regulate my jaywalking, don't presume to govern me in any way shape and form, republicans/conservatives.

And you can hand over whatever you are selling to me without compensation .. and like it.

Snarki: a masterpiece. The image of the Prince of Salina having (metaphorically) to chew and then swallow, grisly bit by bit, the toad as he painfully accommodates the new reality has stayed with me for decades.

Michael Cain: your 11.19 displays simultaneously qualities I can identify with (the urge to keep access to old and beloved capabilities) and those I can barely imagine (the ability to navigate and understand IT). Sometimes I feel like many of you people on ObWi are a next stage on from me of evolution of humanity; oh wait, I guess you are.

The other day my wife was remarking on the piece of my Mac display that looks like it's stuck in a time warp.

Similarly, my wife came thru my office yesterday and asked, "What are you going to do when that old thing dies?" That old thing being an HP Pavilion which runs something like Windows ME . . . or even Win 95! Mostly what it's used for is playing a game (Age of Empires) that my late mother-in-law gave me decades ago. Which may well not be compatible with newer OSs -- although perhaps it's less ancient than the computer it's on. (Obvious answer, wince and go buy a more recent version. Since I have no interest in a Collectors Edition, it's not that bad.)

Of course, there's one other thing on there. Since it's never been connected to the Internet, it's got the spreadsheet with all my accounts and passwords on it. Hard to replace that!

Is that relevant to an individual employee who declines to go to work while his employer is in fundamental breach of contract?

In the case of (Federal) government workers in "critical" jobs, yes it is explicitly legal to require them to show up regardless. Even with no guarantee (although it regularly is done) of make-up pay once the politicians get their act together. Whether is is Constitutional as well is something the courts get to sort out. And this shutdown sees several cases on just that point.

The other fun detail is that, to reduce the political pain, Trump has proclaimed several types of workers (e.g. IRS workers who process refunds) "critical", even though they don't meet the "protection of life or property" criteria specified in the law. Lawsuits on that coming as well....

I am disappointed that the NIS contains the word "climate" exactly once, in the executive summary. IIRC, the Pentagon's recent Joint Operating Environment documents include a whole raft of climate-related things that they think they will have to deal with.

My son's girlfriend works on/with climate models at one of the national labs. Her current funding is straight from DOD. And while the official language in the grant talks about improved weather forecasting, it is an open secret that what DOD is really concerned about is climate change, but they can't fund that, but the weather models and climate models share enormous amounts of code, validation procedures, etc, so...

what DOD is really concerned about is climate change, but they can't fund that

The military has to operate in the real world. (Getting shot at will concentrate the mind in that regard.) So when the politicians insist on ideologically-based stupidities, they find ways to get the job done anyway.

Don't know where to put this, (why don't you shove it, John) but as an active investor in our thoroughly manipulated financial markets, I'm happy to see some professionals join me in condemning republican/conservative gummint corruption of yet another American institution:

I not entirely sold on the idea of Harris as the nominee, but I’d quite like to see her debate Trump...

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/24/kamala-harris-2020-history-224126As Stearns tells it, Harris rose from her seat at the front of the sanctuary and stepped behind Terence Hallinan, the incumbent who billed himself as “America’s most progressive district attorney.” She told the audience, “You know Terence Hallinan has attacked Bill Fazio for being caught in a massage parlor,” a reference to a 1998 raid. Fazio, a former prosecutor who had run two close races against Hallinan and was now taking a third shot at the office, maintained he was there to conduct interviews for a legal case he was working on. He was never charged with any crime.

Then, Harris walked behind Fazio, Stearns said, and recounted the times her opponent had criticized Hallinan “for people having sex in his office,” referring to an incident in which two of Hallinan’s prosecutors were found in flagrante delicto inside the building.

“And then she walked back to the middle and said, ‘I want to make a commitment to you that my campaign is not going to be about negative attacks,’” said Stearns, who is still a Democratic strategist in the city. “’I believe we need to talk about the issues and the policies and the way we’re going to move our criminal justice system forward.”

The response was immediate. “People just jumped on their feet and gave her a standing ovation,” Stearns said. “And I was at the back of the church, and the look on the face of Terence Hallinan and Bill Fazio was, ‘Oh, shit.’’”

FBI agents are complaining that they're not getting the money needed to pay confidential informants, make drug buys, and to pay overtime to state and local cops working with them on drug and prostitution stings.

As with William F. Buckley, I read and listened to George Will in the far past partly to improve my vocabulary, even if their preposterous conservative pronouncements were delivered by the both of them with insufferable down the nose podsnappery.

They may have been mutual friends.

He's a baseball fan, most notably of the Chicago Cubs, a fandom from which he has never tergiversated.

Will's tactical mistake via a vis what the awful, sadistic, worldwide conservative movement, which will be wiped off the face of the Earth, has become, not that I held any of it in high esteem in its 60-year runway to its apotheosis in the p filth, was to step on to the ledge outside the Overton Window for a breath of air, only to find it moved far to the right and locked to his re-entrance by the likes of the lock and load, elitist-hating, types over at the American Conservative and elsewhere.

He looked down from his precarious perch and saw only the bloodthirsty right wing Madame Defarge's below cackling for him to stand athwart history and jump without a net.

Rump's wall "plan," AFAICT, is the equivalent of a restaurant menu including only the text "MEAL - $50." It's like a business plan, associated with an application for a $250k bank loan, that simply reads "We're going to sell stuff."

What environmental impact studies have been done? What's the plan for land acquisition? What criteria will be used to determine what type of barrier (since that changes all time), if any, should be used where? What border-security experts has the administration consulted with?

Have they produced anything? Is this administration capable of producing anything of substance?

Part of me would like to see what would actually happen if Rump got his $5.7B of border-wall funding. What the hell would they even do with it? How screwed up would that effort turn out to be? How much bad press would they get over what I have to assume would be a chaotic failure in planning and execution?

What environmental impact studies have been done? What's the plan for land acquisition?

For the first, DHS asserts that the statute that allows them to waive all regulatory requirements for security-related construction -- and yes, such a law was part of the creation of DHS -- applies to a 2,000-mile-long wall that will break up endangered species habitat, worsen flooding, and probably violate multiple interstate and international water compacts. While it's fairly clear that Congress didn't mean construction on the scale of the wall, poor drafting gives DHS an arguable case.

For the second, eminent domain. The process has started in parts of Texas, where most of the private land they need to acquire is located.

Part of me would like to see what would actually happen if Rump got his $5.7B of border-wall funding. What the hell would they even do with it?

Surprisingly, there are actual details.

They have identified 200-some miles of border, mostly near high-traffic areas, all already with some form of barrier (fencing, vehicle barriers, etc) that would get something heavier and taller. The steel slat sketches that have been shown recently are close enough to other things that have been used that the estimates are probably pretty accurate.

While it's fairly clear that Congress didn't mean construction on the scale of the wall, poor drafting gives DHS an arguable case.

and

For the second, eminent domain. The process has started in parts of Texas, where most of the private land they need to acquire is located.

I'm not referring to their legal authority so much as whether what they want to do is, to be very general about it, *a good idea.* That should count for something, one would think.

They have identified 200-some miles of border, mostly near high-traffic areas, all already with some form of barrier (fencing, vehicle barriers, etc) that would get something heavier and taller. The steel slat sketches that have been shown recently are close enough to other things that have been used that the estimates are probably pretty accurate.

How much will it cost to hire the Mexican military to blow up and tear down the wall?

I have much more of how precisely to take out the garbage n America but let's just call it ranty rant rant and more rant and you can use your imaginations.

I volunteer my stolen labor, out of fealty to p, to shove beautiful steel slats up Larry Kudlow's (open borders and free trade absolutist not to long ago) and Wilbur Ross's respective asses.

Any of the remaining conservatives lurking here want to let p rent your asses gratis for him to talk out of, because his chatty megaphone butthole is now fully engaged and he needs all the dupe help he can get.

Part of me would like to see what would actually happen if Rump got his $5.7B of border-wall funding. What the hell would they even do with it? How screwed up would that effort turn out to be?

Well, we can get an idea from this: he's barely spent 6% of the billion or so he got last year for "border security". So probably, if he got the $5 billion in the budget that he's demanding, he would spend a couple million on the wall. And a comparable amount (admittedly from a different budget) on rallies where he could get cheered for his "win". Because the win is, after all, what matters.

It's now Day 35. And, since it's Friday, we have a new Mueller indictment. This one includes witness tampering. Not a leak about witness tampering, but an actual honest-to-God indictment for it.

I note that the indictment also says that "a senior Trump campaign official" was directed to contact Stone regarding communications with WikiLeaks.

Now who could have "directed" a senior campaign official? Well maybe Kushner or Trump, Jr. Then again, maybe the guy who insisted, repeatedly, that he was the only one making decisions on campaign strategy and tactics....

I confess that I'm actually more concerned at the moment about the latest posturing over Venezuela. When things get dicey for them (and not just in the US), there is a tendency for those in charge to decide that what they need is to rally the populace with a "short, victorious war." And things are definitely getting dicey for Trump.

I'm hoping Venezuela's fascist government, which should be overthrown with savage violence by its own people, but not by American elite conservative fascists, takes the American diplomats still in country hostage (after all, this is what some of them signed up and volunteered for without pay, ain't it, those fucking union members) and we embark on a gigantic new, expensive Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi!! investigation to learn how p ordered their killings to divert attention from his own personal treason and execution.

I also hope Putin ships nuclear weaponry to Venezuela and threatens to nuke all Americans wearing red hats visible from space in retaliation for any republican vermin intervention in that sovereign country.

His paean (piss on) to every patriotic (traitorous socialist), devoted (parasitic, tax-thieving, long lunch break-taking , hardworking (layabout good for nothings) federal (the tree of liberty, etc.) employee (overpaid, healthcare-guzzling elitist affirmative action sluts, fags, niggers, and jewboys) for supporting his shut down of the U.S. government and his lockout from their professional duties without pay, and for eagerly sucking his cock, and Sarah Sanders' and Kellyanne Conway's cocks, this past month is almost as satisfyingly, incoherently Stalinist (republican, conservative) as when the other day he and that smug, stuffed mannequin of a root vegetable, Mike Pence, spit on Martin Luther King's grave with James Earle Ray standing next to them for two entirely white racist slave lynching cotton-picking minutes.

It's not just the bullsh*t he spews, which would be enough for several head-to-desk collisions even if one were only to read the transcript, but it's his faux-emotional, self-satisfied, breathy delivery.

My son's girlfriend works at one of the national labs, and her group does work under agreements for a number of other government agencies. From prior shutdowns, I know they get paid for the time missed. I'll have to remember to ask how the "pay for no work done" pain gets allocated across those other agencies. Or if there's a magical "overhead slush fund" that Congress creates to cover it.

Though it seems that they usually were paid, there seems to be some uncertainty, up until now, as to whether federal workers were legally guaranteed back pay after shutdowns (I believe there have been lawsuits over the issue in the past).

Yes indeed, the Roger Stone indictment and the Trump climbdown in one 12 hour period - let's enjoy the good news (bonus: Ann Coulter calls Trump a wimp!) while we can. I think the dip in Trump's approval polling had a pretty significant effect on him...long may it continue!

"Because, after all, it would be good for the country if he wasn't being scared by them into doing stuff even more stupid than he comes up with on his own."

We ain't see nothing yet.

He's, and they are, just getting started.

The depths of stupid, and malign, have barely been plumbed by the maliciously viral conservative movement.

Michael Lewis, in "The Fifth Risk" surveys the malignancy, now momentarily, perhaps for a day, in remission, until tomorrow morning's next tweet storm and the next dumpsters-full of dog shit the right wing wurlitzer flings against their synchronized propaganda fake news fans.

Lewis speculates, I would say prophesizes, in a subsequent interview, that the next catastrophic con, the fifth risk, is the breaching of the debt ceiling, which p has been training all his misbegotten thieving, loutish, deadbeat life to reneg on and stop payment.

He's a liquidation agent, hired by conservative grocery clerks to assassinate the U.S. government and its financial credibility.

He learned everything there is to know about the nuclear arsenal in 90 minutes, he lied. He learned only one thing, in the first minute ... that there is no reason it can't be used and there is no one who can prevent him from using it.

The Presidency, because of the vacancy, the blind spot, our overrated Founders left in the Constitution is now a protective lair, a hiding place in plain site in which this dragon can find refuge from the Rule of Law and all prosecution.

He has created a Supreme Court that will agree with him, citing the bullshit of original intention by our founding stepfathers of unintentionality.

He is betting that the Office of the Presidency makes him foolproof against criminal prosecution, and he will seek to be President and use all of its unlimited, ill-defined powers until his natural or unnatural death to do just that.

He's stupid like Tony Soprano was insecure, like poisonous snakes are fanged and coiled. Stupid enough to know that the garbage business is a right-out-in-the-open great place to hide the money and the bodies.

Vast caravans, I say caravans, of rotten-toothed, bad-breathed, priced out of the dental market, with no gummint dental safety net Americans, pushing baby carriages full of terrorist non-flossing, sugar-addicted children with typically bad American underbites, overbites, and gingivitis are invading Mexico.

Doesn't Mexico have an ICE equivalent raiding dentist offices and yanking drooling parasite puti, pulling the drool sucker mid-extraction out of their mouths and unsmocking them, out of the chairs and putting them in cages for quick deportation?

So, now that the dust is settling, what actually came out of this fiasco (not that I'm being judgemental)? And what do we expect the impact to be going forward? Both short term (i.e. when Feb 15 rolls around with no wall), the medium term (i.e. through the rest of this year), and the long term (i.e. come 2020 and elections)?

I'd say that they will be about what you would expect when a paper tiger is shown up for what it is. The only uncertainty is in whether the Republicans in the Senate have managed to notice.

When you're a con man, your MO requires a steady stream of new folks to con. Folks who have never heard about you, beyond maybe your name. But when you're President, there are no new people to con any more. And the old marks gradually realize that they've been taken.

Sure, some of them are as incapable of admitting that to themselves as you are of changing your MO**. But your enterprise is in a death spiral nonetheless. The only question is how many get taken down with him.

** And at 70+, someone who is allergic to learning anything isn't going to change his spots.

Mulvaney, bought and paid for corrupt scum, courtesy of the elite and exorbitantly high-interest payday loan industry that owns his republican ass, while they rip off his constituents whom he refuses to grant minimum wage increases.

Ah, but will Congress let it shut down? I'd really like to have listened in to some of the phone calls between red-state governors and their Congress critters this past week. I have to believe that soon after the Senate votes this past Thursday, McConnell had to have told Trump "I don't have the votes to filibuster, and probably not to sustain a veto."

Right wing Libertarians, conservatives, and Tom Delay in Texas are too liberal for real capitalists.

Once Texas gets rid of its socialist levels of the uninsured (only roughly 25%; let's get that number up), abolishes unemployment insurance, and vanquishes unions, OSHA and child labor laws altogether, maybe it will be competitive with China.

"Once Texas gets rid of its socialist levels of the uninsured (only roughly 25%; let's get that number up), abolishes unemployment insurance, and vanquishes unions, OSHA and child labor laws altogether, maybe it will be competitive with China."

Well, that's ONE way to convince Mexico to 'build the wall': to keep out desperate Texans.

Some would say, it's hard to tell whether it's a conservative or a Russian troll farm, they talk so much alike, that Schultz's family growing up in federally-subsidized Brooklyn housing projects was un-American.

Not me. But, maybe the three young women sharing an apartment next to me would say it who work at the Starbucks down on the corner, who when Starbucks increased their hourly wage, also took away their tip jar for good measure as their, and my, rents rise inexorably despite plenty of new luxury rental space going up all around us.

wj, I don't care to use a different club on those who are members of a club that need clubbing.